Social Immunity Quotes

If the man succeeds in becoming indifferent to the opinions of his neighbors he runs into another danger, that of a distorted and extravagant self of the pride sort, since by the very process of gaining independence and immunity from the stings of depreciation and misunderstanding, he has perhaps lost that wholesome deference to some social tribunal that a man cannot dispense with and remain quite sane.

If I know what's true in my heart and my soul, then what people say can't shape that.

I think society has become more and more immune to reality television which is the most frightening thing in the world to me.

The moral immune system of this country has been weakened and attacked, and the AIDS virus is the perfect metaphor for it. The malignant neglect of the last twelve years has led to breakdown of our country's immune system, environmentally, culturally, politically, spiritually and physically.

[On Christianity:] Its lip-service and its empty rites have made it the easiest of all tasks for the usurer to cloak his cruelties, the miser to hide his avarice, the lawyer to condone his lies, the sinner of all social sins to purchase the social immunity from them by outward deference to churches.

The myth of the Kennedys - and the hold - was always the hold of the renegade rich, out there on the frontier beyond accountability.

Nobody's ever gonna hold [ Lena Dunham] accountable. She's a liberal and she's a woman and so she's doubly indemnified against any serious analysis of what the hell she says or thinks. It's a clear example of the double standard out there.

There are lots of actors who are awful people, but nobody talks about them being awful because they've made billions.

There's a cultural expectation that everyone will be immunized, in part to protect the entire population. When people refuse that expectation, they're indulging in a certain kind of political or social immunity.

For me the best way to increase society's resistance to insulting or offensive speech is to allow a lot more of it. As with childhood diseases, you can better resist those germs to which you have been exposed. We need to build our immunity to taking offense so that we can deal with the issue that perfectly justified criticism can raise. Our priority should be to deal with the message not the messenger.